The Blackbird Story

When I was a little girl, my mother and I lived with my grandparents in a small farming community in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. My grandfather drove a truck for Scott Petroleum, and my mother worked at the local blue jean factory. But my grandmother was a retired bookkeeper who sold Avon and looked after me during the day until my mom got home. In the afternoons, my grandmother’s sisters would visit for coffee and dessert. They would sit around the kitchen table sharing the town’s gossip or complaining about the low turnout at Sunday’s potluck dinner. Sometimes they would gather in the den to shell peas and reminisce about their childhood days growing up on the family’s farm. These were the stories I endured over and over until their words got embedded in my mind so sincerely that on any given opportunity, I could have told them myself as if they were my own. They seemed to leave a stain on my tiny spirit much like the stain from the purple hulls of the peas in my bucket.

In the evenings, my grandmother would cut up a whole chicken and fry it in her electric skillet. There would be biscuits and gravy along with whatever fresh vegetables had been gathered from the garden – peas, butterbeans, corn, tomatoes, or squash. Sometimes I felt like I was one of those vegetables still attached to a vine in the dirt just waiting to be picked and taken home for dinner. Other times I felt like a canned peach dolloped with cottage cheese and served in a bowl for dessert. What I am trying to say is this: there is a certain modesty about growing up in the rural south that seems to go unnoticed by adults. Rather it clings to the imagination of the young and tries its best to tether them to the ground with a generational weight of the past.

It was this tethering that I felt so heavily in my heart each night as I struggled to fall asleep. I would leave my bedroom and wander around the house in the dark. My grandmother would find me in the kitchen with a pitcher of sweet tea and a dill pickle jar in my hand. She would fuss and lead me back to bed where she would tuck me in and tell me a bedtime story that she had told her children. I always thought the story was a punishment because it was quite scary to listen to as she told it. It was the story of a little blackbird who lived in the deep dark forest…

THE BLACKBIRD STORY (as told by: Ollie Sue Willingham)

Once upon a time, there was a baby blackbird who lived in a tree in the deep dark forest with his mother, his father, and his brother and sister blackbirds. Each day baby blackbird would follow father blackbird and all the other little blackbirds out to the edge of a limb high up in the family tree where father blackbird would teach his babies how to fly. One by one, the little blackbirds would run, run, run down the branch of the tree and flap, flap, flap their wings and fly off into the bright blue sky. All of them except baby blackbird. When it was baby blackbird’s turn, he would run, run, run down the branch and flap, flap, flap his wings but he would not fly off into the bright blue sky. Day after day, father blackbird would repeat the lesson. And day after day, the little blackbirds would run, run, run, and flap, flap, flap and fly off the end of the tree branch. All of them except baby blackbird who was just too scared to fly. Weeks passed by and the forest grew cold. Father and mother blackbird knew that winter was coming and that they would need to fly south with their babies in order to survive. But what would happen to baby blackbird if he refused to leave the tree? Mother blackbird’s heart broke to think of her baby bird alone in the cold dark forest all winter with no one to feed him or keep him warm. She did not want to leave her baby bird behind, but she knew that if it began to snow before the rest of the blackbird family left the forest, they would all surely die. So, father blackbird gathered all the little blackbirds once more on the edge of a limb high up in the family tree. He explained that they had to leave the forest for the winter but that they would return when spring arrived. One by one, the little blackbirds and father blackbird ran, ran, ran, down the branch of the tree and flapped, flapped, flapped their wings, and flew off into the cold blue sky. All of them except baby blackbird and mother blackbird.

“Oh, thank you, mother blackbird,” squawked baby blackbird, “I knew you would not leave me!”

“No, darling, not just yet. I must stay awhile longer and prepare the nest with extra lining to keep you warm and gather plenty of worms for you to eat,” she chirped.

“For me?” baby blackbird asked. “What about for you, mother? Won’t you need to stay warm and eat worms, too?”

“No, darling. I will have to fly south to join your father and your brothers and sisters,” mother blackbird explained as she choked back tears. “But in the spring, we will return.”

Baby blackbird began to cry, and he shook with fear at the idea of being alone in the cold dark forest all winter.

“What if you teach me to fly, mother? Maybe you can teach me better than father,” he suggested.

“Yes, we will continue to try each day until I leave!” mother promised hopefully.

So, everyday mother blackbird would gather worms and build up the nest with twigs and leaves and animal fur she found on the ground. Then she and baby blackbird would practice his flying technique. Mother blackbird would cheer on her baby as he ran, ran, ran, and flapped, flapped, flapped. But he would not jump off the end of the branch no matter how much she encouraged him. Mother blackbird decided that perhaps her baby would never fly. Then one morning mother blackbird awoke to find ice on all the branches of the family tree. She knew that she must leave the forest that day. With tears in her eyes, she kissed her baby blackbird goodbye and flew off into the sad blue sky. Baby blackbird was alone. He tried to be brave going about the day doing normal blackbird things. But that night after he had eaten, shivering in his nest trying to stay warm as he drifted off to sleep, baby blackbird thought he heard a voice. It came gentle and low at first like the faint howling of the wind.

“Ooo, little blackbird...”

Little blackbird buried his head under his wing and pretended not to hear the sound as he snuggled down in his nest.

“OOooo, little blackbird…”

This time the voice was a little lower and a little closer and a lot scarier. Baby blackbird wiggled down deeper in his nest, his wings shaking and his beak chattering.

“OOOoooo, little blackbird… I’M GOING TO EAT YOU UP!” the voice wailed right next to the little blackbird’s nest.

Baby blackbird was so frightened that he jumped up out of the nest.

“Oh no, you’re not!” he shouted back at the terrifying voice as he ran, ran, ran down the branch of the tree and flapped, flapped, flapped his wings.

Baby blackbird was running so fast and flapping so hard that he barely noticed he had left the family tree and was flying through the dark night sky! Soon he had flown so far from the tree that he actually caught up to mother blackbird. When mother blackbird saw her baby blackbird flying, she began to rejoice. The two continued flying until morning when they reached their destination near the shore of a warm lake where father blackbird and all the other little blackbirds were waiting for them. Father and mother blackbird were very happy that their baby had finally learned to fly and that he would not have to spend the winter alone in the cold dark forest where he would surely have frozen to death.

Not knowing how she had done it, father blackbird inquired of mother blackbird, “How did you get him to fly?”

Mother answered with a sly smile, “Before I left the forest, I baked a pie for the wise old owl at the top of the family tree and asked him to watch out for our baby blackbird.”

Mother blackbird knew that the wise old owl would not let her baby blackbird freeze to death. And so, it was he who had come close to the nest the night before with his terrifying low voice and frightened baby blackbird into flying far from the cold dark forest and saving his life. The End.

If I were still awake by the time my grandmother had finished this story, there would be no hope of me staying in my room on my own. But if I had fallen asleep listening to her voice, I would ask to hear it again the next night. Something about the words of the wise old owl, “I’M GOING TO EAT YOU UP!” had also frightened me enough to know that I could not stay planted on a vine in a vegetable garden until I withered and died. My roots were buried in that small Delta community, but my wings were ready to fly.